The Evolution of the FARC

...His efforts at social reform, his attempted rapprochement with the guerrillas, and his proposed political changes were clouded over by these accusations throughout his four years in office...

...This was the first of the guerrilla bases that later came to be known as "Independent Republics...

...and that popular protest be decriminalized...

...The paramilitaries, meanwhile, had been growing and attracting the sympathy of the right, which argued that these "self-defense groups" should be recognized as the third actor in the conflict...

...Between 1970 and 1982, the FARC grew from a movement of only about 500 people to a small army of 3,000, with a centralized hierarchical structure, a general staff, Guerrilla lea military code, training school and political program...

...Over the next year and a half, the guerrilla movement met with substantial military success, capturing many army bases and villages, and ambushing army patrols...

...But they were kept under control, at least for a time, by the moderating influence of much of the guerrilla leadership...

...It was during Barco's subsequent administration that most of the UP's activists were murdered...

...The government's strategy was to offer to legalize the FARC's political activity and to convert their military force into a political party...

...The soldiers were handed over in July of 1997 under the supervision of the Red Cross and international observers from 13 countries, mainly from Europe and Latin America...

...and the Liberals' Luis Carlos Galn who would certainly have won the election...

...That implied visiting with the FARC leader in his military encampments...

...Now, each arrived with proposals impossible for the other to comply with...

...No legal crop offered them the advantages that coca still does: the ease and economy of growing an Andean-Amazon plant that needs no fertilizers or pesticides, a ready market of local traffickers, a fixed price, and constant demand...

...Galdn was replaced by C6sar Gaviria, a party hack who had been Minister of Government, and who was elected president for the term 1990-1994...

...At this point, a failed assassination plot by guerrillas against a prominent senator named Aurelio Irragori led the government to suspend the negotiations...

...plained that it was unnecessary and offensive for the government to have to justify its economic policies before a group of "gangsters...

...In early 1987, the army had unleashed a powerful offensive against the Fifth Front of the FARC in the department of Urabi at the behest of the banana companies, who felt that the guerrillas were backing the banana workers union in its drive for higher wages...

...The Palace of Justice debacle, pressure from business associations, and the tactic of carrot and stick-all came together to substantially change the nature of the negotiations...

...Many of the most popular destinations lay in the same remote areas where the guerrillas were strong and where they constituted the only authority...

...The army bombarded the region and the government ended the truce...

...As violence once again escalated, the rebel groups opted to unify as the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Coordinating Group (CGSB...

...The government accepted...

...Seeing that it would be impossible to break through the rigid political and agrarian structures using legal means, the opposition declared an armed rebellion...

...in August 1996 they culminated in destruction of the army base at Las Delicias in Caqueti and the capture of 60 soldiers...

...Four months later, however, the delegations resumed contact in Tlaxcala, Mexico...

...He publicly recognized the political character of the conflict by denying that the guerrillas were simply a band of drug traffickers...

...This small guerrilla representation had been the condition on which the military agreed to permit the process of rewriting the Constitution...

...This led to the formation of the Patriotic Union (UP), a legal political party originally affiliated with the FARC and supported by the Communist Party and other groups on the Colombian left...

...In those regions, Marulanda, joined by Jacobo Arenas, a charismatic Marxist ideologue who described himself a "professional revolutionary," organized a community based on economic self-management and military self-defense...

...The disaster dealt a crippling blow to the talks, which continued, but in an atmosphere of mutual recrimination...

...be a decisive factor in upcoming presidential elections...

...The FARC felt that the alliance imposed the interests of the minority over the majority, as when the EPL kidnapped Durin, which collapsed the talks at Tlaxcala...

...The new strife was known simply as La Violencia...

...The virtual absence of active guerrillas from what was called an "agreement on the fundamentals" had two goals: to reduce their political prominence and to make sure that the crucial theme of military-civilian relations did not become subject to negotiation...

...As the government withdrew, the vacuum was filled by the paramilitaries, who had transformed themselves into an unofficial wing of the Armed Forces...

...Samper was paralyzed...

...By 1998, in fact, despite furious opposition from the right and the army, the leading presidential candidates began to court the insurgents...

...In Mexico, the CGSB succeeded in placing a debate about the neoliberal model on the agenda, and the government's economic team came to the negotiations to justify the Washington Consensus of free trade and privatization...

...Fierce battles, often characterized by extreme cruelty, marked the early twentieth century in Colombia, as land-hungry peasants and their reformist allies faced off against the country's landowning oligarchy, which was backed by the conservative hierarchy of the Catholic Church...

...The army continued to facilitate paramilitary seizures of the most important economic, political and military regions: Urabi, the banana plantation area...

...The final days of Barco's government were notably violent...

...For their part, the guerrillas demanded 200 demilitarized municipalities, as well as meaningfully verifiable measures against the paramilitaries...

...From 1930 to 1946, a series of Liberal Party-run administrations, referred to in Colombian history as the Liberal Republic, inaugurated land reform that restricted ancestral privileges and unleashed furious political opposition from the Conservatives...

...The woman's scars are from a bomb blast...

...During this event, the FARC made several demands as a prerequisite for peace talks: that the army withdraw from five additional municipalities...

...On the one hand, two different guerrilla subgroups used the accords to reinsert themselves into mainstream politics...

...the demobilization of paramilitary groups...

...The Conservative candidate, Andrds Pastrana, had created channels of communication with the FARC...

...The guerrillas emerged from the talks divided...

...In June and July 1996, guerrillas mobilized in the departments of Guaviare, Putumayo, CaquetA, Norte de Santander and Bolivar...

...Then Jorge Eli6cer Gaitin, a charismatic Liberal and land-reform movement leader, was gunned down in Bogotd in 1948...

...The site of the meetings, La Casa Verde, became pport...

...ers and Church leaders, along with peasants under their control, were organized as the Conservative Party...

...In 1958, the Conservative and Liberal elites brought La Violencia to an official end with a National Front that allowed the two parties to share public offices and alternate in the presidency...

...The President, whose space for maneuvering was already sharply limited, backed down in the face of broad opposition led by the U.S...

...This is exactly marked the what led them to embrace the coca-tr profitable cultivation of coca...

...that the guerrillas be treated with respect...

...These events helped humanize coca farmers, especial30NMI1A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON COLOMBIA ly when strike leaders told the media about the government's disregard of their precarious conditions...

...In 1953, an anti-Communist military strongman, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, came to power by force, backed by elements within both traditional parties and-significantly-by Washington...

...During the same period other guerrilla forces, the National Liberation Army (ELN) in 1964 and the People's Liberation Army (EPL) in 1967, were created, and the big landowners dominated the country's economy...

...Commander Manuel Marulanda, "Tirofijo, " who with Jacobo Arenas founded the FARC in 1964...

...The UP gained significant parliamentary representation in the 1986 elections...

...These groups, the majority of the EPL and a split-off of the ELN, gave up their arms as well as their areas of control...

...Immediately afterward, the FARC extended offensive actions through the territory, FARC guerrillas washing their uniform and Colombians began feeling that the state had lost control of public order...

...Six months later, General Bedoya, commander of the Armed Forces, threatened Samper with a military coup if the government ordered him to withdraw from La Uribe...

...Just as the rules birth of the and conditions of negotiation were de tax, being agreed to, however, the urban guerrilla group April 19th Movement (M-19) seized the Palace of Justice, leading to the killing of over 100 persons, including several Supreme Court justices...

...He is currently in exile in Spain but continues to write his column...

...It also meant that the guerrillas must suspend kidnappings, extortion and bombings of physical infrastructure...

...It fell to Gaviria to advocate the writing of a new Constitution, a process begun by Barco...

...For their part, government spokespeople argued that significant economic changes were impossible, since Colombia was now part of a globalized economy that imposed its own obligatory rules...

...In 1964, the army attacked the "Independent Republics" of Marulanda and Arenas by land and by air with 16,000 soldiers, and captured the encampments...

...To subdue the Liberal uprisings, the government gave weapons to Conservative peasants throughout the country, as well as backing from the National Police...

...Just a few days into his administration, the FARC placed conditions on the resumption of peace talks: a military withdrawal from the FARC-dominated municipality of La Uribe, in the department of Meta...

...The guerrillas then cancelled the rapprochement and resumed their attacks on the Armed Forces...

...During this period the FARC consolidated its influence, opened some new areas, and focused on training military leaders...

...This realization marked the birth of the infamous gramaje, a cocatrade tax that is nothing less than guerrilla-imposed extortion of drug traffickers and prosperous coca farmers...

...The government and the guerrillas also named a public-order advisory commission, and the government further agreed to name a civilian as Minister of Defense-a position reserved for the military since the onset of the National Front-and agreed to outlaw the paramilitary "selfdefense" groups...

...The military growth of the guerrillas was public knowledge, and they proposed releasing the prisoners they held in exchange for the army's further withdrawal in Cagubn...

...For its part, the CGSB demanded radical political reform first, beginning with restructuring of the Armed Forces...

...The Defense Minister declared that it was time to do away with the "myth of La Casa Verde" and that the cease-fire could not be used as recourse for criminal activity...

...These actions were increasingly ambitious and efficient...

...This famous as a hopeful symbol of the peace process...

...In response, popular insurrections broke out in the capital and in virtually every city where the LiberVol X)(XIV, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 200023 23 VoL XXXIV, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2000REPORT ON COLOMBIA als were strong...

...The extreme right led an opposition to these concessions, publicizing statistics about guerrilla kidnappings and the guerrillas' links with drug traffickers...

...But both candidates stressed two fundamental promises: to withdraw from the five municipalities, and to deal directly with Marulanda to establish bases for negotiation...

...When Rojas Pinilla began flirting with the idea of prolonging his rule, however, the Liberals, who had hoped to win the next elections, withdrew their support...

...Ernesto Samper assumed the presidency in 1994, significantly weakened by the opposition's accusations that he had received campaign contributions from the drug cartels...

...But they had already been abandoned: Some 43 guerrillas, including the two leaders, had fled and taken refuge in the mountains of the southwestern state of Cauca...

...But the arrangement did nothing to resolve the underlying land conflicts, and violence continued in the countryside...

...At the same time, thousands of Liberal peasants armed themselves against the Conservative government...

...On the eastern plains, peasants backed by the Liberal Party, with assistance from Communist Party activists, managed to form a 10,000-man army that inspired the formation of small guerrilla groups throughout the country...

...The guerrilla movement tried to dig in and hold out in the highlands, but was ultimately forced to retreat to the jungles of the Andean foothills...

...Jaime Pardo Leal of the UP, followed closely by his replacement, Bernardo Jaramillo...

...On the Atlantic Coast, for example, peasants invaded the large haciendas common to the region and distributed the land among themselves...

...Once securely in power, the General decreed an amnesty which was welcomed by the armed peasants of the eastern plains and by many Liberals and Conservatives as well...

...In this small test of strength, the FARC did rather well...

...Recent aerial fumigations against legal and illegal crops, and government attempts to quell the circulation of inputs for processing coca leaves by declaring the so-called Special Zones of Public Order raised the peasant growers' costs of production, and therefore, of their survival as well...

...At the same time, there was repression of the peasant movement, expulsion of small tenants from the lands they cultivated and, in general, expansion of commercial agriculture to less populated parts of the country, as well as colonization of unused lands...

...The FARC had launched the idea, and public opinion baptized it the "Peace Constitution...

...At that point anti-Rojas Pinilla demonstrations spread throughout the country, and many were violently repressed as the government accused the Communists of disturbing public order...

...Translated from Spanish by NACLA...

...While the two sides could not arrive at agreement on that point, they did concur on verification and on the role of international oversight, neither of which could be enacted without a cease-fire...

...But in the wake of the EPL action, the government once again canceled the talks, and they collapsed in confusion...

...Today he is chief commander of the FARC...

...After the internally divided Liberals fell in 1946, a new Conservative government used political violence to regain the oligarchy's lands and remain in power...

...These differences were dangerous...

...Now, divisions began growing within the CGSB...

...Since the early 1980s, the history of the FARC has been a history of peace negotiations...

...On the rich and violent soil of those conflicts lie the origins of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's most powerful present-day guerrilla group...

...The government insisted on guerrilla demobilization as a condition for participation in the Constituent Assembly...

...Backed by Washington's National Security Doctrine and a $170 million U.S...

...The guerrilla team questioned every aspect of the Consensus, even as business associations and the right comCoca farmers were humanized when strike leaders told the media about the government's disregard of their precarious conditions...

...Their growth was due mainly to the repression unleased against popular protest, and by the growing impoverishment of the population-not to their participation in the drug trade...

...With Escobar's financing and the army's tolerance, paramilitaries began decimating the leftist UP with impunity...

...A few months later the guerrillas destroyed a military convoy in Caqueti and killed 25 soldiers...

...In that context, both sides decided to again postpone the talks...

...The government named Horacio Serpa as Peace Advisor and created a department of social policy mandated to make "social reinsertion" attractive to insurgents who wanted to give up their arms...

...The government, losing prestige day by day, rejected the conditions and the army mounted a large military operation that--despite a massive propaganda effort-produced absolutely no results...

...Meanwhile, the paramilitary forces had been growing dramatically, in many cases financed by the head of the Medellin Cartel, Pablo Escobar, especially around the northern region of the Magdalena Medio...

...The guerrillas had not ended their attacks against the oil pipelines, nor had they diminished their kidnappings or seizures of villages and police stations...

...In the 1970s, the National Front was still dominating political life, and on the economic front, the government of Misael Pastrana (1970-1974) adopted a rural development model that aimed to eliminate all obstacles to free investment in the countryside...

...The protest was repressed by the Armed Forces in a highly publicized way, making conflicts in the areas of colonization visible and sensitizing the public to the reality of coca producers' lives...

...the Panama border...

...Ambassador, Colombia's Archbishop Primate, the Conservative hierarchy, retired military officers, followers of ex-President Gaviria, the business associations and even portions of the left...

...At first the guerrillas tried to resist growing coca: They suspected that it represented a kind of underground "imperialist" invasion, and they worried that peasants who became prosperous would stop supporting the revolutionary struggle...

...These were the days when many students, intellectuals, workers and peasant leaders joined the guerrilla struggle...

...Negotiators for both sides agreed to call for a cease-fire and an end to hostilities...

...But these measures were more symbolic than real, and the government demanded that the guerrillas concentrate in 60 sites...

...The guerrillas refused to confine themselves geographically-since that would mean giving up their most effective weapon-and they demanded that the paramilitaries be disbanded...

...That notion is false, however...

...At the beginning of his presidency, Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) named a Peace Commission, and talks began between the insurgents and the government...

...Barco wanted to restore the legitimacy of the state, which had been badly damaged in the peasant areas and the territories of colonization...

...The business associations attacked the negotiations and demanded that the government harden its bargaining position...

...loan, Rojas Pinilla began bombing guerrilla and opposition peasant positions...

...They agreed then on the bases for negotiation: withdrawal of military authority and police forces from the five municipalities, formation of an unarmed civic corps to keep local order in the demilitarized zone, dismantling of the paramilitary groups, decriminalization of popular protest, and convening of participation by the international community...

...And the guerrillas were in the colonized regions long before coca cultivation appeared...

...Between 1948 and 1958, La Violencia took the lives of more than 300,000 Colombians...

...Gunmen assassinated four presidential candidates: Carlos Pizarro of the M-19 (who had just turned in their arms...

...The peace negotiations themselves, which by now had been moved to Caracas, advanced rapidly...

...Property owners, backed by the area's aggressive political bosses, responded with public and private force, and succeeded in recovering their land...

...One peasant guerrilla who emerged from the Liberal uprising was Pedro Antonio Marin...

...Meanwhile, the Sumapaz region, about 50 miles south of Bogotd in the department of Meta, was d n El a cleared of the military and turned lers realized into an area where meetings could take place among representatives ing coca of the government, the guerrillas an losing and civil society...

...Thus they began the process of negotiation...

...Pastrana succeeded in tilting the balance in his favor, and as soon as he won his narrow victory, he kept his word and met with Marulanda...

...Unlike President Betancur, Barco tried to offer them full participation in civil and political life if they would lay down their weapons...

...Cultivation of illegal crops was established in the colonization areas not simply because of weak army presence, but because the colonists were on the brink of ruin...

...Later he would come to be known as Manuel Marulanda Velez, or "Tirofijo" ("Sure Shot...

...This led to concentration of land ownership, the undermining of small-scale peasant producers and the rise of peasant proletarianization...

...Meanwhile, in that banl the areas of colonization, the col- would m onizers' situation was desperate...

...His writing on behalf of human rights, peasants and marginalized Colombian communities earned him death threats from the paramilitary United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC...

...Pastrana's economic development model also drove many peasants to the cities, raising urban unemployment and setting the stage for the great National Civic Strike of 1977 and the Draconian Security Statute of 1978 that drastically reduced the right to protest and organize...

...Because of Pastrana's program, thousands of desperate peasants were propelled into both organized and spontaneous invasions of rural properties...

...other, reform-minded peasants and their allies were known as Liberals...

...The government called upon the guerrillas to demobilize and disarm in exchange for political guarantees and economic compensation...

...Samper accepted the withdrawal, limiting it to the rural areas of La Uribe...

...And he suspended the kidnapper identification rewards...

...For the ELN and EPL, however, the problem was that the FARC wanted to dominate the coordinating group...

...The Liberal candidate, Horacio Serpa, had participated in previous contentious negotiations, so he was a bit more estranged...

...Once again, peace talks are underway...

...The assassination unleashed a decadelong heightening of the old conflict...

...Amid this less-than-promising atmosphere, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), a minority group in the guerrilla coalition, kidnapped and killed a former Conservative Cabinet minister named Argelino Durin...

...But the guerrilla leadership soon realized that banning coca would mean losing peasant support to the authorities...

...The guerrillas' rapprochement with coca also led to the belief that they are traffickers-narcoguerrillas...

...For the government this meant placing the guerrillas within fixed geographical boundaries in order to make verification of the ceasefire possible...

...Bereft of all institutional support, peasant su they lived as permanently displaced peasants...

...and Montes de Maria, an area of big farms near Cartagena...

...In 1984, the FARC renounced kidnapping, and the parties agreed to a general, verifiable ceasefire...

...and suspension of government rewards for identifying kidnappers-a weapon used almost exclusively against the guerrillas...

...Yet the still-mobilized guerrilla alliance, the CGSB, was offered only six of 70 seats in the Constituent Assembly charged with drafting the new document...

...In 1955, a military operation was launched against rural regions that remained strongholds of agrarian guerrillas who had fought in the name of Gaitdin, and where Communist guerrillas were also concentrated...

...Weeks later, however, the conversations resumed, but with less trust among the parties...

...The talks had begun with an agreement to continue them "come what may...

...The government and the international community recognized their military strength, and the FARC's political presence in the country's interior began to seem as though it might ms...

...At about the same time, nearly 200,000 peasants felt the effect of drug eradication policies on their illicit crops and thus their economic well-being...

...Later that year, they founded the FARC in the same area...

...The land ownAlfredo Molano is a book author, journalist and a weekly columnist for the newspaper El Espectador...

...With national negotiations stalled, the FARC, communicating through the Church, proposed a regional dialogue in Caqueti, thus establishing a precedent of using domestic locations for negotiations...

...Immediately after they relinquished their territory, it was promptly occupied by paramilitaries...

...At the beginning of Virgilio Barco's four-year presidency, in 1986, the government offered "an outstretched but firm hand" to the guerrillas...